The heart of the matter: The centre of the Milky Way as seen by the Paranal Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile.

This is the most detailed image of the centre of the Milky Way ever taken. The nine giga-pixel original has been stitched together from thousands of individual infra-red images by Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile. As big as the image is however, it represents a tiny fraction of the universe we can currently observe. The purpose of detecting infra-red radiation, as opposed to visible light, is to allow scientists to see past the dust that obscures the heart of the Milky Way for optical telescopes. New Scientist reports that the image shows an estimated 84 million stars, ten times as many as was previously thought existed in this part of the galaxy, and a large number of faint red dwarfs, known to be a good place to look for exoplanets. Click here for the zoomable version of the image. Click here to see other telescopes completed, under construction and planned in the Atacama Desert of Chile.